Vatican Continues With More Corruption

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

The show "The Untouchables" on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.

The Vatican issued a statement Thursday criticizing the "methods" used in the journalistic investigation. But it confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing "sadness over the publication of reserved documents."

 

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state's gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure.

Vigano, currently the Vatican's ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.

In one letter, Vigano tells the pope of a smear campaign against him (Vigano) by other Vatican officials who wanted him transferred because they were upset that he had taken drastic steps to save the Vatican money by cleaning up its procedures.

"Holy Father, my transfer right now would provoke much disorientation and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been rooted in the management of so many departments," Vigano wrote to the pope on March 27, 2011.

In another letter to the pope on April 4, 2011, Vigano says he discovered the management of some Vatican City investments was entrusted to two funds managed by a committee of Italian bankers "who looked after their own interests more than ours."

LOSS OF $2.5 MILLION, 550,000 EURO NATIVITY SCENE

Vigano says in the same letter that in one single financial transaction in December, 2009, "they made us lose two and a half million dollars."

The program interviewed a man it identified as a member of the bankers' committee who said Vigano had developed a reputation as a "ballbreaker" among companies that had contracts with the Vatican, because of his insistence on transparency and competition.

The man's face was blurred on the transmission and his voice was distorted in order to conceal his identity.

In one of the letters to the pope, Vigano said Vatican-employed maintenance workers were demoralized because "work was always given to the same companies at costs at least double compared to those charged outside the Vatican."

For example, when Vigano discovered that the cost of the Vatican's larger than life nativity scene in St Peter's Square was 550,000 euros in 2009, he chopped 200,000 euros off the cost for the next Christmas, the program said.

Even though, Vigano's cost-cutting and transparency campaign helped turned Vatican City's budget from deficit to surplus during his tenure, in 2011 unsigned articles criticizing him as inefficient appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

On March 22, 2011, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone informed Vigano that he was being removed from his position, even though it was to have lasted until 2014.

Five days later he wrote to Bertone complaining that he was left "dumbfounded" by the ouster and because Bertone's motives for his removal were identical to those published in an anonymous article published against him in Il Giornale that month.

In early April, Vigano went over Bertone's head again and wrote directly to the pope, telling him that he had worked hard to "eliminate corruption, private interests and dysfunction that are widespread in various departments."

He also tells the pope in the same letter that "no-one should be surprised about the press campaign against me" because he tried to root out corruption and had made enemies.

Despite his appeals to the pope that a transfer, even if it meant a promotion, "would be a defeat difficult for me to accept," Vigano was named ambassador to Washington in October of last year after the sudden death of the previous envoy to the United States.

In its statement, the Vatican said the journalistic investigation had treated complicated subjects in a "partial and banal way" and could take steps to defend the "honor of morally upright people" who loyally serve the Church.

The statement said that today's administration was a continuation of the "correct and transparent management that inspired Monsignor Vigano."

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/corruption-scandal-vatican_n_1235038.html?1327618055&icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl7|sec1_lnk1%26pLid%3D130572

What people talk about before they die

By Kerry Egan, Special to CNN

As a divinity school student, I had just started working as a student chaplain at a cancer hospital when my professor asked me about my work.  I was 26 years old and still learning what a chaplain did.
"I talk to the patients," I told him.

"You talk to patients?  And tell me, what do people who are sick and dying talk to the student chaplain about?" he asked.
I had never considered the question before.  “Well,” I responded slowly, “Mostly we talk about their families.”

“Do you talk about God?
“Umm, not usually.”
“Or their religion?”
“Not so much.”
“The meaning of their lives?”
“Sometimes.”
“And prayer?  Do you lead them in prayer?  Or ritual?”
“Well,” I hesitated.  “Sometimes.  But not usually, not really.”
I felt derision creeping into the professor's voice.  “So you just visit people and talk about their families?”
“Well, they talk.  I mostly listen.”
“Huh.”  He leaned back in his chair.

A week later, in the middle of a lecture in this professor's packed class, he started to tell a story about a student he once met who was a chaplain intern at a hospital.

“And I asked her, 'What exactly do you do as a chaplain?'  And she replied, 'Well, I talk to people about their families.'” He paused for effect. “And that was this student's understanding of  faith!  That was as deep as this person's spiritual life went!  Talking about other people's families!”

The students laughed at the shallowness of the silly student.  The professor was on a roll.
“And I thought to myself,” he continued, “that if I was ever sick in the hospital, if I was ever dying, that the last person I would ever want to see is some Harvard Divinity School student chaplain wanting to talk to me about my family.”

My body went numb with shame.  At the time I thought that maybe, if I was a better chaplain, I would know how to talk to people about big spiritual questions.  Maybe if dying people met with a good, experienced chaplain they would talk about God, I thought.

Today, 13 years later, I am a hospice chaplain.  I visit people who are dying – in their homes, in hospitals, in nursing homes.   And if you were to ask me the same question - What do people who are sick and dying talk about with the chaplain?  – I, without hesitation or uncertainty, would give you the same answer. Mostly, they talk about their families: about their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters.

They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave.  Often they talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally.

They talk about how they learned what love is, and what it is not.    And sometimes, when they are actively dying, fluid gurgling in their throats, they reach their hands out to things I cannot see and they call out to their parents:  Mama, Daddy, Mother.

What I did not understand when I was a student then, and what I would explain to that professor now, is that people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God.  That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.  That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence.
We don't live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories.  We live our lives in our families:  the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.
This is where we create our lives, this is where we find meaning, this is where our purpose becomes clear.

Family is where we first experience love and where we first give it.  It's probably the first place we've been hurt by someone we love, and hopefully the place we learn that love can overcome even the most painful rejection.

This crucible of love is where we start to ask those big spiritual questions, and ultimately where they end.
I have seen such expressions of love:  A husband gently washing his wife's face with a cool washcloth, cupping the back of her bald head in his hand to get to the nape of her neck, because she is too weak to lift it from the pillow. A daughter spooning pudding into the mouth of her mother, a woman who has not recognized her for years.

A wife arranging the pillow under the head of her husband's no-longer-breathing body as she helps the undertaker lift him onto the waiting stretcher.

We don't learn the meaning of our lives by discussing it.  It's not to be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues or mosques.  It's discovered through these actions of love.
If God is love, and we believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family.

Sometimes that love is not only imperfect, it seems to be missing entirely.  Monstrous things can happen in families.  Too often, more often than I want to believe possible, patients tell me what it feels like when the person you love beats you or rapes you.  They tell me what it feels like to know that you are utterly unwanted by your parents.  They tell me what it feels like to be the target of someone's rage.   They tell me what it feels like to know that you abandoned your children, or that your drinking destroyed your family, or that you failed to care for those who needed you.
Even in these cases, I am amazed at the strength of the human soul.  People who did not know love in their families know that they should have been loved.  They somehow know what was missing, and what they deserved as children and adults.

When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, something else can be learned:  forgiveness.  The spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive.

We don’t have to use words of theology to talk about God; people who are close to death almost never do. We should learn from those who are dying that the best way to teach our children about God is by loving each other wholly and forgiving each other fully - just as each of us longs to be loved and forgiven by our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kerry Egan.

 http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/28/my-faith-what-people-talk-about-before-they-die/?hpt=hp_c2

Canada's Shame.

Seal Slaughter’s Days May Be Numbered

It's not over yet, but Iggy Pop, Perez Hilton, Kelly Osbourne, Pamela Anderson, Sarah McLachlan, Diane Warren, and all the people who have spoken out, worn the PETA shirts, and appeared in our ads in the last year have brought us closer to the end of the Canadian seal slaughter. Just weeks before the annual slaughter is set to resume, Ryan Cleary, a member of the Canadian Parliament who represents one of the regions in which the seal slaughter takes place, has acknowledged that the tremendous outcry against beating and shooting babyseals has him questioning the future of the bloody massacre.

Says Mr. Cleary: "Part of our history is also whaling, for example, and the day came when the whaling industry stopped. Now, is that day coming with the seal hunt? It just may be."

Cleary's statement comes just weeks after Russia announced that it was taking steps to ban the import of Canadian harp-seal fur, a move that came after Pamela Anderson led an international appeal on PETA's behalf.

Polls have consistently shown that most Canadians oppose the seal slaughter, and as Cleary noted, the industry is an increasing liability for Canada that the country is having more and more difficulty defending.

What You Can Do to Help Stop the Seal Slaughter

Please click here to tell Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that yes, the time has come to send the seal slaughter the way of whale slaughter and ban it before the next massacre commences this spring.

http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2012/01/24/mp-says-seal-slaughter-s-days-may-be-numbered.aspx

GOP: You Have A Disaster On Your Hands

(CNN) -- Memo to Republican Establishment:I would send this memo to each of you individually, but I'm not sure exactly who you are. I've been told that you exist and that people like my colleagues Bill Bennett, Karl Rove, and Bill Kristol are charter members of it.

James Carville says the Republican field is vulnerable.

I am assuming you are out there and I assume there are more than three of you. At any rate, I thought I'd take a moment to catch up with you and make some observations on how things are going for your party.

James Carville

Let me break it to you gently -- you've got a first-class disaster on your hands. I know you boys thought this thing would work out and you would be able to whip the Republicans in line to fall in behind Mitt (I assume you are all males but if there is a female in the establishment, I apologize.) Not going too good, is it fellows?
It's been a terrible time to be a Republican. There have been many moments during this process that have caused me great joy. Certainly the events of Thursday, ending with the CNN debate, and even the Fox debate Monday night, have helped ease the pain of my beloved Tigers' and Saints' recent defeats.
I mean, most people thought it was kind of a watermark when your Tea Party gang booed the golden rule. You know, I've spent some time in Philly and they have always thought they were pretty radical because they actually booed Santa Claus and Willie Mays. Philly, I've got news for you -- you ain't got nothing on South Carolina Republicans. They just aren't buying any of that do-unto-others garbage.
I actually thought my favorite moment of this delightful process was when one of your eight front-runners, Herm Cain, (as Sarah Palin calls him) actually ran an ad with his campaign manager endorsing him. (Rove, why didn't you think of that in 2000? Imagine the headline: "Rove endorses Bush.")
The climax of that delicious ad is when he actually takes a drag on a cigarette. But my favorite thing about Herm's campaign manager is that he is the only person in the history of the world that was actually barred from political consulting. Let me tell you, I've been in this business for quite a while and I've never known of anyone other than Mark Block to be suspended from practicing this profession.
At any rate, let's talk a minute about Mitt. He was your guy -- he was methodical, meticulous, married once. He has completely blown himself up over an issue that everyone knew was coming. Have you had a chance to look at John McCain's research operation on Mitt? Wow. And let me assure you, that thing has been supplemented, expanded, and annotated. God only knows about the Obama people -- they've got a billion dollars! And how about my friends over at American Bridge (the Democrat-leaning political action committee)? Clearly Mitt is merely in the beginning of this tax-return, financial-disclosure, Cayman Island (and God only knows what else) fiasco.
Your new front-runner is one of your old front runners, Newt Gingrich. I would like to take a moment to revel: I cannot personally tell you how pleased I am to see old Newt rise to the top after listening to all of your nauseating, sickening lectures on the evils of government and the importance of family values.
Now, you guys have to deal with a $1.6 million Freddie Mac consultant (who says he wasn't a lobbyist) who has been married three times. Hope you, at least, enjoy the Super Bowl. It could be your last hurrah for a while.
PS -- As my former boss once said, I feel your pain. That's why I didn't mention Rick Perry.


Editor's note: James Carville is a Democratic strategist who serves as a political contributor for CNN, appearing frequently on CNN's "The Situation Room" as well as other programs on all CNN networks. Carville remains active in Democratic politics and is a party fundraiser.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/21/opinion/carville-republican-disaster/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9

Memory: and Our 'Self'

Our ability to remember forms the basis of who we are and is a psychological trick that fascinates cognitive scientists. But how reliable are our memories?

 

Memory is our past and future. To know who you are as a person, you need to have some idea of who you have been. And, for better or worse, your remembered life story is a pretty good guide to what you will do tomorrow. "Our memory is our coherence," wrote the surrealist Spanish-born film-maker, Luis Buñuel, "our reason, our feeling, even our action." Lose your memory and you lose a basic connection with who you are.

It's no surprise, then, that there is fascination with this quintessentially human ability. When I cast back to an event from my past – let's say the first time I ever swam backstroke unaided in the sea – I don't just conjure up dates and times and places (what psychologists call "semantic memory"). I do much more than that. I am somehow able to reconstruct the moment in some of its sensory detail, and relive it, as it were, from the inside. I am back there, amid the sights and sounds and seaside smells. I become a time traveller who can return to the present as soon as the demands of "now" intervene.

This is quite a trick, psychologically speaking, and it has made cognitive scientists determined to find out how it is done. The sort of memory I have described is known as "autobiographical memory", because it is about the narrative we make from the happenings of our own lives. It is distinguished from semantic memory, which is memory for facts, and other kinds of implicit long-term memory, such as your memory for complex actions such as riding a bike or playing a saxophone.

When you ask people about their memories, they often talk as though they were material possessions, enduring representations of the past to be carefully guarded and deeply cherished. But this view of memory is quite wrong. Memories are not filed away in the brain like so many video cassettes, to be slotted in and played when it's time to recall the past. Sci-fi and fantasy fictions might try to persuade us otherwise, but memories are not discrete entities that can be taken out of one person's head, Dumbledore-style, and distilled for someone else's viewing. They are mental reconstructions, nifty multimedia collages of how things were, that are shaped by how things are now. Autobiographical memories are stitched together as and when they are needed from information stored in many different neural systems. That makes them curiously susceptible to distortion, and often not nearly as reliable as we would like.

We know this from many different sources of evidence. Psychologists have conducted studies on eyewitness testimony, for example, showing how easy it is to change someone's memories by asking misleading questions. If the experimental conditions are set up correctly, it turns out to be rather simple to give people memories for events that never actually happened. These recollections can often be very vivid, as in the case of a study by Kim Wade at the University of Warwick. She colluded with the parents of her student participants to get photos from the undergraduates' childhoods, and to ascertain whether certain events, such as a ride in a hot-air balloon, had ever happened. She then doctored some of the images to show the participant's childhood face in one of these never-experienced contexts, such as the basket of a hot-air balloon in flight. Two weeks after they were shown the pictures, about half of the participants "remembered" the childhood balloon ride, producing some strikingly vivid descriptions, and many showed surprise when they heard that the event had never occurred. In the realms of memory, the fact that it is vivid doesn't guarantee that it really happened.

Even highly emotional memories are susceptible to distortion. The term "flashbulb memory" describes those exceptionally vivid memories of momentous events that seem burned in by the fierce emotions they invoke. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a consortium of researchers mobilised to gather people's stories about how they heard the news. When followed up three years later, almost half of the testimonies had changed in at least one key detail. For example, people would remember hearing the news from the TV, when actually they initially told the researchers that they had heard it through word of mouth.

What accounts for this unreliability? One factor must be that remembering is always re-remembering. If I think back to how I heard the awful news about 9/11 (climbing out of a swimming pool in Spain), I know that I am not remembering the event so much as my last act of remembering it. Like a game of Chinese whispers, any small error is likely to be propagated along the chain of remembering. The sensory impressions that I took from the event are likely to be stored quite accurately. It is the assembly – the resulting edit – that might not bear much resemblance to how things actually were.

When we look at how memories are constructed by the brain, the unreliability of memory makes perfect sense. In storyboarding an autobiographical memory, the brain combines fragments of sensory memory with a more abstract knowledge about events, and reassembles them according to the demands of the present. The memory researcher Martin Conway has described how two forces go head to head in remembering. The force of correspondence tries to keep memory true to what actually happened, while the force of coherence ensures that the emerging story fits in with the needs of the self, which often involves portraying the ego in the best possible light.

One of the most interesting writers on memory, Virginia Woolf, shows this process in action. In her autobiographical essay, A Sketch of the Past, she tells us that one of her earliest memories is of the pattern of flowers on her mother's dress, seen close-up as she rested on her lap during a train journey to St Ives. She initially links the memory to the outward journey to Cornwall, noting that it is convenient to do so because it points to what was actually her earliest memory: lying in bed in her St Ives nursery listening to the sound of the sea. But Woolf also acknowledges an inconvenient fact. The quality of the light in the carriage suggests that it is evening, making it more likely that the event happened on the journey back from St Ives to London. The force of correspondence makes her want to stick to the facts; the force of coherence wants to tell a good story.

How many more of our memories are a story to suit the self? There can be no doubt that our current emotions and beliefs shape the memories that we create. It is hard to remember the political beliefs of our pasts, for example, when so much has changed in the world and in ourselves. How many of us can accurately recall the euphoria at Tony Blair's election in 1997? When our present-day emotions change, so do our memories. Julian Barnes describes this beautifully in his Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending, when a shift in his protagonist Tony's feelings towards his former lover's parents unlocks new memories of their relationship. "But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change? … I don't know if there's a scientific explanation for this … All I can say is that it happened, and that it astonished me."

Of all the memories we cherish, those from childhood are possibly the most special. Few of us will have reliable memories from before three or four years of age, and recollections from before that time need to be treated with scepticism. When you think about the special cognitive tricks involved in autobiographical memory, it's perhaps no surprise that it takes a while for children to start doing it right. Many factors seem to be critical in children's emergence from childhood amnesia, including language and narrative abilities. When we are able to encode our experience in words, it becomes much easier to put it together into a memory. Intriguingly, though, the boundary of childhood amnesia shifts as you get closer to it. As a couple of recent studies have shown, if you ask children about what they remember from infancy, they remember quite a bit further back than they are likely to do as adults.

There are implications to the unreliability of childhood memories. A recent report commissioned by the British Psychological Society warned professionals working in the legal system not to accept early memories (dating from before the age of three) without corroborating evidence. One particular difficulty with early memories is their susceptibility to contamination by visual images, such as photographs and video. I'm sure that several of my childhood memories are actually memories of seeing myself in photos. When we look back into the past, we are always doing so through a prism of intervening selves. That makes it all the more important for psychologists studying memory to look for confirming evidence when asking people to recall their pasts.

And yet these untrustworthy memories are among the most cherished we have. Memories of childhood are often made out to have a particular kind of authenticity; we think they must be pure because we were cognitively so simple back then. We don't associate the slipperiness of memory with the guilelessness of youth. When you read descriptions of people's very early memories, you see that they often function as myths of creation. Your first memory is special because it represents the point when you started being who you are. In Woolf's case, that moment in her bed in the St Ives nursery was the moment she became a conscious being. "If life has a base that it stands upon," she wrote, "if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory."

What should we do about this troublesome mental function? For one thing, I don't think we should stop valuing it. Memory can lead us astray, but then it is a machine with many moving parts, and consequently many things that can go awry. Perhaps even that is the wrong way of looking at it. The great pioneer of memory research, Daniel Schacter, has argued that, even when it is failing, memory is doing exactly the thing it is supposed to do. And that purpose is as much about looking into the future as it is about looking into the past. There is only a limited evolutionary advantage in being able to reminisce about what happened to you, but there is a huge payoff in being able to use that information to work out what is going to happen next. Similar neural systems seem to underpin past-related and future-related thinking. Memory is endlessly creative, and at one level it functions just as imagination does.

That's how I think we should value memory: as a means for endlessly rewriting the self. It's important not to push the analogy with storytelling too far, but it's a valuable one. Writing about her novel, Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel has explained how she brought the protagonist Thomas Cromwell alive for the reader by giving him vivid memories. When writers create imaginary memories for their characters, they do a similar kind of thing to what we all do when we make a memory. They weave together bits of their own personal experience, emotions and sensory impressions and the minutiae of specific contexts, and tailor them into a story by hanging them on to a framework of historical fact. They do all that while making them fit the needs of the narrative, serving the story as much as they serve truth.

To emphasise its narrative nature is not to undermine memory's value. It is simply to be realistic about this everyday psychological miracle. If we can be more honest about memory's quirks, we can get along with it better. When I think back to my first attempt at solo swimming, it doesn't bother me that I have probably got some of the details wrong. It might be a fiction, but it's my fiction, and I treasure it. Memory is like that. It makes storytellers of us all.

• Charles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist. His book on autobiographical memory, Pieces of Light: How we Imagine the Past and Remember the Future, is published by Profile Books in July. You can pre-order it here. He is the author of The Baby in the Mirror (Granta), a reader in psychology at Durham University and a faculty member of the School of Life. You can follow him on Twitter at @cfernyhough

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/13/our-memories-tell-our-story

U.S. Meat Banned In Europe----WHY???

Instead of forcing Europe to open its markets to U.S. beef, why not just quit implanting hormones in American cattle? When U.S. and Canadian beef cattle go to feedlots, hormone pellets are implanted under the ear skin, a process that is repeated at the midpoint of their 100-day fattening period. The hormones increase the weight of the cattle, adding to profits by about $80 per animal.

The most common hormone in current use is estradiol, a potent cancer-causing and gene-damaging estrogen. The FDA maintains that residues of estradiol and other hormones in meat are within "normal" levels, and has waived any requirements for monitoring and chemical testing.

Europe, however, has rightly eyed U.S. claims with great skepticism and since 1989 the European Union has forbidden the sale of beef from hormone-treated cattle. The opening of global markets has placed that ban under attack.

On Feb. 17, a panel of World Trade Organization judges began closed hearings on a U.S. and Canadian challenge charging that the European ban is merely protectionist and is costing North America $100 million a year in lost exports.

The FDA's claims of safety were endorsed by a 1987 report of two U.N. bodies, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, an endorsement that is the main basis of the U.S. and Canadian action against Europe. The joint committee that prepared the report, however, has minimal expertise in public health and high representation of veterinary scientists and senior FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials. Relying heavily on unpublished industry information and outdated scientific citations, the committee claimed that hormone residues in legally implanted cattle are so low that eating treated meat could not possibly induce any hormonal or carcinogenic effects.

However, confidential industry reports to the FDA, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal high hormone residues in meat products even under ideal test conditions. Following a single ear implant in steers of Synovex-S, a combination of estradiol and progesterone, estradiol levels in different meat products were up to 20-fold higher than normal. The amount of estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an 8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone levels by as much as 10%, based on conservative assumptions, because young children have very low natural hormone levels.

In real life, the situation may be much worse. An unpublicized random USDA survey of 32 large feedlots found that as many as half the cattle had visible illegal "misplaced implants" in muscle, rather than under ear skin. This would result in very high local concentrations of hormones, and also elevated levels in muscle meat at distant sites. Such abuse is very hard to detect.

Responding to European concerns, the USDA recently claimed that, based on standard residue monitoring programs, drug levels in violation of regulations have not been detected in meat products. However, of 130 million livestock commercially slaughtered in 1993, not one was tested for estradiol or any related hormone.

The question we ought to be asking is not why Europe won't buy our hormone-treated meat, but why we allow beef from hormone-treated cattle to be sold to American and Canadian consumers. Untreated meat is currently hard to find and expensive; if it were widely produced and available, the price would come down. At the least, meat produced from hormone-treated animals should be explicitly labeled.

These hormones are linked ever more closely to the escalating incidence of reproductive cancers in the U.S. since 1950-55% for breast cancer, 120% for testicular cancer and 190% for prostate cancer. The endocrine-disruptive effects of estrogenic pesticides and other industrial food contaminants known as xenoestrogens are now under intensive investigation by federal regulatory and health agencies. But the contamination of meat with residues of the far-more-potent estradiol remains ignored.

The world trade judges ought to listen to one of the top FDA officials involved in meat safety, David Livingston. In Orville Schell's 1984 meat industry expose, "Modern Meat," Livingston is quoted as saying, "Well, if you're going to have enough inexpensive meat for everyone, you're going to have to use some of these drugs. But personally, I'd rather eat meat that was raised without them." In other words, what's good enough for the rest of us is not something he wants to eat. 

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-24/local/me-41521_1_hormone-levels

Losing Weight The Hard Way

Consumers ought to put up their guard when they spot ads that use the words "weight loss" and "free trial" – especially when those phrases are used in combination. 

Weight loss is rarely as easy as taking a pill, and "free trials" are not, as some ads imply, physician-managed drug trials.

As for "free," don't bet on it. 

In the latest Federal Trade Commission strike against inflated weight loss claims and bogus free trials, the agency announced this week that a marketer of acai berry supplements and colon cleansers will repay $1.5 million to consumers to settle charges over its ads and billing practices. 

The case is worth reviewing, considering this is the time of year many consumers resolve – at least briefly -- to shed a few pounds.

The $1.5 million settlement stems from a suit the FTC filed last year against Phoenix-based Central Coast Nutraceuticals. The suit accused the marketer of Acai Pure supplements and ColoPure and Colotox colon cleanser of misleading consumers into believing the products had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey and Rachel Ray.

Central Coast and four related companies claimed that Acai Pure supplements could "flush out excess pounds" and that people who wanted to lose significant amounts fast might "qualify" for the supplement by answering a series of questions.

Regardless of how people answered these questions, they qualified for the free trial, FTC said.

The catch with any free trial – whether it's a diet product or tooth whitener -- is that a consumer has to cancel by a certain date to avoid additional shipments and the hefty charges that go with them.

Canceling, though, isn't always easy. 

In Central Coast's case, consumers were told they could try the product "risk free" as long as they returned the product within 14 days if they decided they didn't want it. 

According to the FTC's suit:

•The company didn't tell consumers until after they received the product that to return it, they must first get a return authorization from the company.

• Consumers who asked for a return authorization complained their requests were ignored.

• Consumers who shipped the product back without the authorization found that the company charged them anyway – and sometimes threw in a restocking fee. 

The practices, the FTC said, "made it all but impossible (for consumers) to avoid paying full price for the products, typically $39.95 to $59.95." 

The defendants are banned from offering free trials to consumers as part of the settlement.

If the practices of Central Coast sound familiar, it's because pitches like this are all over the Internet and air waves. 

Last fall, the FTC convinced a court to temporarily halt free trials for weight loss products, free credit reports and tooth whiteners by a Canadian marketer, Jesse Willms, and his affiliates. In that suit, the FTC contended consumers lost $450 million to free trials they couldn't cancel. 

Last spring, the agency cracked down on sites that advertised weight loss products with fabricated "news" reports that used the names of real media outlets. 

If you're tempted by a "free trial" offer, protect yourself by: 

• Researching the seller. The Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org/us) provides company reports. 

• Reading terms carefully. Find out exactly what you'll need to do to cancel – and the date by which you must act. Uncheck prechecked order boxes that might obligate you to pay for additional items. 

• Paying safely. If you order with a credit card, you'll have the right to dispute if terms change. If you use another method of payment, you won't. You only have 60 days to file a credit dispute – so don't let bogus refund promises lull you into missing that deadline. 

• Complaining if things go wrong. If a company doesn't do what it promises –or if it springs new terms on you after you order, complain to the FTC at ftc.gov or 1-877-382-4357.

Better yet, try this risk-free trial instead: Head to your local library and check out materials that will help you improve your diet and begin a sensible exercise program. 

http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2012/01/losing_weight_the_hard_way_pla.html

Meatless in the Midwest: A Tale of Survival

IN an ideal world, vegetarians would be built like camels. Not humpbacked, of course, but able to sustain themselves through long stretches by tapping stored energy reserves, like previously consumed soy products.
But after the first three dinners in my new hometown, where I moved from New York to cover the Midwest for this newspaper, even this veteran vegetarian was flagging. 

This city, after all, is celebrated as a Mecca of meat. And any newcomer should expect to start with a tour of the most venerable purveyors of cows, pigs and chickens in what I’ve been told are their most delicious forms.
So, yes, I’ve “eaten” at some of these famous restaurants. There was the meal at the Golden Ox steakhouse (baked potato), Stroud’s fried chicken (rolls) and Arthur Bryant’s barbecue, where, searching for vegetarian options on the menu, skipping over the lard-bathed French fries, pausing to consider the coleslaw, I ordered the safest option (a mug of Budweiser). 

After three days of this, starving, I went alone to the nearest Chinese restaurant I could find, where I feasted on a steaming plate of meatless mapo tofu.
It should be stated right up front that the Midwest, with its rich culture, stark natural beauty and superlative decency, quickly defies stereotypes. Living in the middle of the country is very different from living in the middle of nowhere.
But make no mistake: meat-loving is one stereotype that the region wears with pride. Lard still plays a starring role in many kitchens, bacon comes standard in salads, and perhaps the most important event on Kansas City social calendars is a barbecue contest.
Even though the region boasts some of the finest farmland in the world, there is a startling lack of fresh produce here. This is a part of the country — and there’s no polite way to put this — where the most common vegetable you’ll see on dinner plates is iceberg lettuce. 

“The mentality of the Midwest is, green is garnish,” explained Heidi Van Pelt-Belle, who runs Füd, a vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City.   

As a result, many heartland vegetarians say that eating, that most essential activity, can be a constant struggle. Longtime members of the club recall the days when doctors and family members alike warned that forgoing meat would result in serious malnutrition. This was not hyperbole to those who, lacking other options, subsisted on pizza.
Over the years, many have learned tricks, like calling ahead to a restaurant to negotiate a special entree. Dinner party? Best to eat first, knowing that side dishes might be the only options. Some say they have learned to cook for themselves more, to avoid the inevitable barrage of questions, if not outright mockery, that comes with eating in public. 

Just outside Iowa City, Sparti’s Gyros taunts vegetarians even as it caters to them. The menu includes the Greek Veggie Wheat Pita, but adds a punch line: “For people who just don’t like eating. Put some meat on it!” 

In Nebraska, a place where cattle outnumber people, vegetarians are sometimes accused of undermining the state economy. The owner of what was billed as the lone vegetarian restaurant in Omaha said it had several pounds of ground beef thrown at its doors shortly after opening. After a short run, it closed last year.
“Being a vegetarian in Nebraska is like being a Republican in Brooklyn — less of an outcast than a novelty,” said David Rosen, who became a vegetarian as a teenager in Omaha and is now a writer in Brooklyn. “Except that you don’t have to prepare special meals for Republicans.” 

But around the Midwest, the situation has improved, vegetarians acknowledge, not least because hummus inexplicably has joined Tater Tots as standard bar fare. There are two fully vegetarian restaurants in Kansas City, and most restaurants in the bigger cities of the region offer at least one vegetarian-friendly option.
There are all sorts of compelling reasons people become vegetarian. Health. Discomfort with the killing of animals. Environmental concerns. 

My own reason requires no soapbox. I never liked meat. And when I learned, while eating a burger at the cafeteria of the American Museum of Natural History at age 5, that “meat” was actually a euphemism for — and even dedicated carnivores hate being reminded of this — muscle, I felt my preference had received a hearty endorsement from common sense. Over time, even chicken stock disappeared from my diet.

Some patrons, unlike the reporter, line up for brisket at Arthur Bryant’s barbecue, in Kansas City, Mo.

Friends and family members have regarded my status as a vegetarian with curiosity and amusement over the years. But even with that practice I was unprepared for the barrage of jokes that followed the announcement of my assignment covering the Midwest — some playing on the theme of squandered opportunity (how could someone turn down all that delicious barbecue?) and others hinting at concerns about survival (are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?). 

There is, both here and elsewhere, something about being a vegetarian in Kansas City that simply strikes people as funny.

In truth, it is less satisfying to be a vegetarian here. Those on the coasts have it better. Like many of my brethren, I have instinctively gravitated to cuisine from faraway places where meat is a luxury not all can afford. In New York this meant frequenting terrific Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, Lebanese and Venezuelan restaurants. But here — with a notable few exceptions like the Aladdin (the best lentil soup I’ve ever had), Blue Koi (expert dumplings and noodle dishes) and Lill’s (terrific Spanish tapas) — the best options are better described as good enough.

To be fair, that is probably more than can be said for my cooking, which typically consists of simple batches of rice and beans large enough to sustain a week of protein-rich lunches. And my attempts to teach myself to make my favorite Indian dishes have had the unintended effect of making the local Indian restaurants that I had thought lacking suddenly appear more palatable. 

But most difficulty comes on the road during reporting trips in an area that stretches from Oklahoma to North Dakota. And though many meals, particularly in small towns, are of the bread-and-water variety, I have stumbled upon some decent restaurants as well: Japanese in Tulsa, Okla.; Indian in Lincoln, Neb.; Ethiopian in Sioux Falls, S.D.; Italian in Minot, N.D.; and, my favorite place to stop on a reporting trip, Thai Spice, just outside Joplin, Mo.

Along the way I’ve also picked up a few valuable lessons for vegetarians roaming these wide open spaces.  In no particular order: check out Web sites detailing the vegetarian options at fast-food chains; look for Chinese restaurants, which consistently turn up in the most unexpected places; carry a jar of peanut butter everywhere; and never underestimate the potato — what it lacks in flavor it makes up for in ubiquity.

And, finally, it is important to not forget that hunger is the price a picky eater must be willing to pay without becoming insufferable.

During a recent visit to the Ranchito Tex-Mex Cafe in Hugoton, Kan., a small community encircled by feedlots packed with cattle and the plants that process them, I inquired if the beans at the restaurant were prepared with meat.

“There’s no meat,” the waitress replied helpfully. “It’s just pinto beans smashed up with lard.”

Lard, of course, is rendered pork fat.

A day later and a day hungrier, a waitress at the Down-Town Restaurant in nearby Ulysses was more understanding and forthcoming about ingredients. The beans had lard. The rice had chicken stock. And on it went. 

“You want a salad,” she finally declared.

This, for the record, is one of the great misconceptions of vegetarians. Most do not, in fact want a salad. We want something with a bit more substance. 

But a salad it was. And yes, iceberg lettuce. Thankfully, no bacon. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/dining/a-vegetarians-struggle-for-sustenance-in-the-midwest.html?hp

Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality.

I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what  others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

http://www.ariseindiaforum.org/nurse-reveals-the-top-5-regrets-people-make-on-their-deathbed/

The Iowa Caucuses & Extremism (from the NY Times)

The Iowa caucuses, in which a nation awaits the verdict of a handful of some of its least representative citizens, are not going to settle the race for the Republican nomination for president. But they did put on display the choice the Republicans present to voters: right, far right or the far, far right. 

The caucuses Tuesday night were headed to an astonishing draw between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, followed by Ron Paul. More than anything, the tight finish suggested that Mr. Romney has had a hard time selling his recently minted conservatism to hard-core Republican conservatives; two-thirds of caucusgoers identified themselves as Tea Party supporters. 

The Republican caucuses only do a middling job of predicting who will win the presidency in November. But, this year, perhaps more than others, they were an important event to watch for any American voter.

The errors, absurd misstatements and unrelenting extremism were not the result of some “gotcha” moment in which a candidate was cornered in an interview or debate by a tricky (or maybe not so tricky) question. The Republicans have had months, millions of dollars and the advantage of there being no competing Democratic contest, to present the images of their own choosing — and they are dark and disturbing. 

The candidates were all nasty to each other; Newt Gingrich called Mr. Romney a “liar” on Tuesday. But when it came to President Obama, they were off the charts with baseless charges that would be laughable if they were not so insulting to the president and to the intelligence of voters.

Iowa’s economy is not as bad as that in many parts of the country, so the candidates mainly tried to outbid each other in pandering to its socially conservative Republicans. Mr. Gingrich served up a right-wing theology that would dismantle every social advance since the institution of child labor laws and eviscerate the judiciary that has protected civil rights for a half-century. 

Mr. Santorum talked endlessly about his opposition to a woman’s right to choose an abortion and gay Americans’ right to marry, while insisting that he would protect Americans’ right to carry guns anywhere at anytime.

Even then, he had a hard time keeping up with Representative Michele Bachmann, founder of the House Tea Party caucus, who said she was the only Republican who would defend “faith, marriage and the protection of life from conception to natural death.” 

Representative Paul delighted young crowds with his libertarian slogans — no war, no Federal Reserve, basically no government — but seemed to have no real ideas other than to follow the literal words of the Constitution. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas based virtually his entire appeal on his religious faith — a desperation play that failed and led him to retreat to Texas to decide whether to continue his obviously pointless candidacy.

In the middle of all this, of course, was Mr. Romney, no real conservative trying to be all forms of conservative — forswearing his belief in abortion rights and global warming while insisting the health care reform he championed in Massachusetts isn’t right for the rest of the country. He rivaled Mr. Gingrich in his false attacks on Mr. Obama, including claiming that the president travels the world apologizing for America.

As the Republican competition moves to New Hampshire next week, it is likely to focus less on social issues and more on economic issues. But that means even more of the slash-and-burn economics and class warfare that were also on display here. 

Primaries bring out the extremism in candidates, but this year seems much worse because the “center” of the Republican Party has lurched so far to the right. The only good news in this primary season is that the more Americans listen to the Republican hopefuls, the more the voters will realize how out of touch these candidates are with the majority of Americans. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/the-iowa-caucuses.html?_r=2&src=tp&smid=fb-share